Before I take the final step of joining the Orthodox Church, I do want to get an answer for my own peace of mind, as to WHY the devastation that was post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism even took place. I just want to finally KNOW, and be able to have peace of mind over it, and put it all behind me. I have many theories, thoughts, but I just want to know. I don't want to join Orthodoxy with any unanswered questions hanging over my head or in the back of my mind. This is another reason why I am not rushing into it.

I found this book on Amazon, and I'm wondering if this would explain it for me (the blurb on it seems to indicate that it might)? Has anyone here read it?

"O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us..." (from the Prayer of St Basil the Great)

I am a catechumen in a WRO parish. I read the first chapter which you can access online. The best point made is that if A is the teaching of the church and later A is declared false or not the whole story this is where infallibility runs into a problem. I've come to believe that the strength of the Orthodox church is that even if one jurisdiction drifts to suspect actions(ala the Russian Church during parts of communist rule) the other jurisdictions can be relied on to maintain truth. with one man rule so to speak you just drift farther and farther away. IMO The RCC will have a very hard time reconciling with Orthodoxy because of having to renounce infallibility. My sister and I were discussing the other night how much is different between the pre 1964 church and present. My eye opener came when I first attended a WRO liturgy. The "traditional Catholics" are sort of caught in a trap because VII started a movement resulted in a bigger change that the English reformation.

I am a catechumen in a WRO parish. I read the first chapter which you can access online. The best point made is that if A is the teaching of the church and later A is declared false or not the whole story this is where infallibility runs into a problem. I've come to believe that the strength of the Orthodox church is that even if one jurisdiction drifts to suspect actions(ala the Russian Church during parts of communist rule) the other jurisdictions can be relied on to maintain truth. with one man rule so to speak you just drift farther and farther away. IMO The RCC will have a very hard time reconciling with Orthodoxy because of having to renounce infallibility. My sister and I were discussing the other night how much is different between the pre 1964 church and present. My eye opener came when I first attended a WRO liturgy. The "traditional Catholics" are sort of caught in a trap because VII started a movement resulted in a bigger change that the English reformation.

I know exactly what you mean, and I agree!

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"O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us..." (from the Prayer of St Basil the Great)

For myself, the issue started back in the 11th century. The Great Schism, the innovations, the erroneous theological and dogmatic teachings. I saw that the popes moved far away from the True Church of Christ. When Rome broke off from the other four Patriarchates (Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem), they broke off their union with Christ. That's all it took for me to see the difference.

In the end the judgement of God and the judgement of people is different. So I don't know if a book can explain the truth.

My advice is to ask God to force you to the best path to salvation through prayer. Also you can ask God to give you enough information to make the best decision.

Looking in prophecy , the Malachi prophecy says that there would be 1 to 2 more popes and Eastern orthodox prophecy says that Romano Catholics will come back to Eastern Orthodox faith. Knowing this, Malachi prophecy of popes ,Romano Catholics should start preparing themself so they would not drift into Protestantism or even other religion without salvation that would depart them from faith, eternal life, confession and many more.

Churches being part of Eastern orthodox Church have everywhere on Earth the same belief and everything done in one Church is recognized as valid across entire Eastern orthodox Church.So if a Protestant denomination would come to Eastern orthodoxy they would have to accept all the teachings and to renounce errors. So anything including baptism done in a Church is recognized everywhere in Eastern Orthodox Church. Some Churches are independent administratively so they have these names. OCA stands for Orthodox Church of America. Most Churches are now organized based on ethnic lines, however everybody is free to go to which Church likes and being Catholic in name Eastern orthodox Church tries to encompass everybody and give entrance to heaven and eternal life.

Before I take the final step of joining the Orthodox Church, I do want to get an answer for my own peace of mind, as to WHY the devastation that was post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism even took place. I just want to finally KNOW, and be able to have peace of mind over it, and put it all behind me. I have many theories, thoughts, but I just want to know. I don't want to join Orthodoxy with any unanswered questions hanging over my head or in the back of my mind. This is another reason why I am not rushing into it.

When all is said and done, sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and take the plunge, step forward in faith. You may never get all the answers - indeed it's highly likely that you won't - and you may just have to set that burden down and move forward into Orthodoxy.

(FWIW, my husband (raised RC, grew up in Irish Catholic neighborhood, parochial schools, almost became a priest) says that, in the Orthodox Church, he found the true catholic church.)

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"If but ten of us lead a holy life, we shall kindle a fire which shall light up the entire city."

In the end the judgement of God and the judgement of people is different. So I don't know if a book can explain the truth.

My advice is to ask God to force you to the best path to salvation through prayer. Also you can ask God to give you enough information to make the best decision.

Looking in prophecy , the Malachi prophecy says that there would be 1 to 2 more popes and Eastern orthodox prophecy says that Romano Catholics will come back to Eastern Orthodox faith. Knowing this, Malachi prophecy of popes ,Romano Catholics should start preparing themself so they would not drift into Protestantism or even other religion without salvation that would depart them from faith, eternal life, confession and many more.

How do you suppose this will occur? Do you really believe that over a billion RC's will just abandon the Papacy and become Orthodox? Even if Rome were destroyed by a nuclear bomb in the future, I highly doubt that the world's Catholics just wouldn't elect another Pope and move the Vatican somewhere else. Our faith is not in externals, or buildings and bureaucracy, but in the religion we believe. As long as there are people left who believe in the principles of Catholicism then there will still be a Catholic Church as well as a Pope to lead her.

So I think EO's will have to just put up with the existence of we RC's for quite a while to come

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Men may dislike truth, men may find truth offensive and inconvenient, men may persecute the truth, subvert it, try by law to suppress it. But to maintain that men have the final power over truth is blasphemy, and the last delusion. Truth lives forever, men do not.-- Gustave Flaubert

If you want to know how these will occur pray to God to find out. Also this is not about about people but sick angels and last one can destroy the Earth so don't put your hope in billion people doing and organizing. The only hope is God and prayer for Roman catholic Church to be the Church God wants to be and to have the true faith in eyes of God and to do things God likes to be done. Also pray for all people in Roman Catholic Church or pretending to be Roman Catholics, convinced or not to become good Christians in the yes of God. Also pray to God to lead Roman Catholic Church where he wants.

In the end the judgement of God and the judgement of people is different. So I don't know if a book can explain the truth.

My advice is to ask God to force you to the best path to salvation through prayer. Also you can ask God to give you enough information to make the best decision.

Looking in prophecy , the Malachi prophecy says that there would be 1 to 2 more popes and Eastern orthodox prophecy says that Romano Catholics will come back to Eastern Orthodox faith. Knowing this, Malachi prophecy of popes ,Romano Catholics should start preparing themself so they would not drift into Protestantism or even other religion without salvation that would depart them from faith, eternal life, confession and many more.

How do you suppose this will occur? Do you really believe that over a billion RC's will just abandon the Papacy and become Orthodox? Even if Rome were destroyed by a nuclear bomb in the future, I highly doubt that the world's Catholics just wouldn't elect another Pope and move the Vatican somewhere else. Our faith is not in externals, or buildings and bureaucracy, but in the religion we believe. As long as there are people left who believe in the principles of Catholicism then there will still be a Catholic Church as well as a Pope to lead her.

So I think EO's will have to just put up with the existence of we RC's for quite a while to come

Ok, if you promise not to have angry thoughts I can tell you how this may have happen. This is the book, the confession of an anti apostle that may have the answer. http://www.aculink.net/~catholic/aa1025.htm Actually search google on anti apostle .

So basically these people are sick and deceived and a sick people usually is not treated with a stick. So the medicine is to pray for all impersonators in the Church of God and for all enemies of Church of God to become good Christians as God wants them to be. Also we need to pray for all fake Churches to come back into the Church of God and to stop misleading people.

Dear God, please make now and in eternity all Christians together with impersonators of Christians together with enemies of Christians to be forced to salvation without pain and anger and with love , and to become true Christians . Please force all humans to salvation for all eternities with love and without pain or anger. Please force now and in all eternities all misleading or impersonator Churches to come back into your Church and to stop misleading people. Please make now and in the future all false doctrines true again by changing them and also please make people in all eternities have what you know they need in all eternities without pain or anger and with love. Amin.

The work opens by quoting from Bl. Andrew Sheptyckyi, the great Eastern Catholic bishop - "The main goal of my life is the unity of the Churches, the unity of people, of God's children", and Professor Hull makes this goal his own. As he writes: "Hence, far from being a petty domestic dispute within the modern Western Church, present-day traditionalist dissidence reveals its providential role in the history of Catholicism, since it has brought into clearer relief the real cause of the centuries-old division between the Eastern Churches and Rome".

The need for a strong defense against outside attacks on the Church made Catholics rally around the pope, in the name of orthodoxy, little intending that that same power could eventually be deployed in the interest of heterodoxy... Hull writes: “There was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the spirit of ultramontanism and the general acquiescence of Latin[-rite] Catholics in the Pauline liturgical revolution. Or, put another way, ultramontanism is the difference between the rebellious, strong-minded Catholics [who resisted Protestant changes in] 1549 England and the conformist, unthinking ones of the decades following the Second Vatican Council.”

The reviewer at the National Review, a post Vatican II Novus Ordo Catholic, was not sympathetic to Hull's thesis.

The thesis, as far as I've been able to gather from reviews and what little I've read, is this: The liturgical crisis in the Latin Church begins not in the wake of Vatican II but with the pre-Vatican II status quo (so idealized by traditionalists). In fact, the roots could be traced back even further to the time of the Counter-Reformation, and, further yet, to the division between East and West. The "Catholic heart" has somehow been severed from the "Catholic mind."

What I believe that Professor Hull said is this. A church is supposed to operate in unseen world, so things should be really beautifull in the unseen world. Baptism operates into unseen world. Holy Communion operates into unseen world. Blessing of water operates into unseen world. So if things get ugly in unseen world and the things supposed to happen does not happen you have ugl;yness in unseen world while you may be able to retain beautifulness in the seen world. What I mean looke here how blessing of water http://stmaryofstamford.org/holywater.htm . Water before blessing: Water after blessing: So in 1600th Michael the brave decided to builed a Church and he asked Romano Catholic pirests and Eastern orthodox priests to bless the water. And the closed the water, the blessed water and open the bottles after several days and Roman Catholic Water was green and smelling and Eastern orthodox Water was crispy l.So things were ugly in unseen world for hundreds of years prior to vatican II and now the uglyness pushed out into the view and can not be denied any more. And many Roman Catholics saints comming to this world have affirmed Eastern Orthodox Church is the true Church and you can see in years around 2000 the effect of water blessing in unseen world. To from . Please don't throw roks at messenger and think how would you feel if when going to unseen world you find the truth.

So in the end we people hjave ionterest in salvation so this prayer remains fully valid , and in this prayer I let God decide which Church is true and which one are pretending either in other world either in this world. So let's pray for false Churches, that God knows are false to go back into the True Church:Dear God, please make now and in eternity all Christians together with impersonators of Christians together with enemies of Christians to be forced to salvation without pain and anger and with love , and to become true Christians . Please force all humans to salvation for all eternities with love and without pain or anger. Please force now and in all eternities all misleading or impersonator Churches to come back into your Church and to stop misleading people. Please make now and in the future all false doctrines true again by changing them and also please make people in all eternities have what you know they need in all eternities without pain or anger and with love. Amin.

I don't actually come from a traditionalist RC background, but in modern Catholicism, where I did come from, there is a lot of the Protestant spirit, namely the sense that it is now all right to question traditional dogmas and to revise them if necessary in order to conform to current ways of thinking. At first this drew me to traditional Catholicism (e.g. Latin Mass movement, not SSPX or sedevacantism!), but I realized that the RC Church had made the truth of their dogmas dependent on a single man, the Pope, so that if the Pope himself obviously deviates from previous teachings (as he has done in the context of ecumenism, for example), there is no way within the RC doctrinal framework to accommodate this. In Orthodoxy, on the other hand, the responsibility for preserving dogma lies with the whole people of the Church, as the Patriarchs showed in their 1848 epistle. Of course, it is theoretically possible that all the people could abandon the truth, but I suppose when that happens the world will end.

Anyway, even though pre-Vatican II Catholicism was much more (though not completely by any means) faithful to ancient Christian dogma, the seeds for the current disaster were already there.

I think it's important to keep some perspective here...It sounds as if in your eyes, the Pre-Vatican II RC church was a valid, true church. Is this so? Are you joining Orthodoxy strictly as a revolt against post-VII Roman Catholicism, or because you believe that the Orthodox Catholic Church is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church? If one believes this, it becomes easy for one to understand why any heterodox church would inevitably go way off track.

I agree with the above poster that the whole Vatican II problem begins before the year 1000, probably more with Charlemagne than anything else, then continues through scholasticism, through the middle ages (See, Ivan Karamazov's take...), twists itself some more in the counter-reformation, gets even nuttier in the 19th century, and just keeps it up in the 20th.

I'm not accusing you here, and I really don't want to come off that way. My tone/choice of words above was really just to illustrate the idea, not to say anything about you personally, but honestly, part of embracing Orthodoxy is letting things like this go. Insofar as it doesn't relate to a direct exchange I'm having with a RC friend, or someone of the like, I really don't bother with what Rome does wrong anymore. They're just a really, really big group of powerful protestants that I will continue to pray for

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It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.-Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

I am not saying that everything is wrong in Romano Catholcism like for example doing mission and having 1 billion people +. May God make all Churches One Church, true both in seen world and in unseen world.Amin.

I don't actually come from a traditionalist RC background, but in modern Catholicism, where I did come from, there is a lot of the Protestant spirit, namely the sense that it is now all right to question traditional dogmas and to revise them if necessary in order to conform to current ways of thinking. At first this drew me to traditional Catholicism (e.g. Latin Mass movement, not SSPX or sedevacantism!), but I realized that the RC Church had made the truth of their dogmas dependent on a single man, the Pope, so that if the Pope himself obviously deviates from previous teachings (as he has done in the context of ecumenism, for example), there is no way within the RC doctrinal framework to accommodate this. In Orthodoxy, on the other hand, the responsibility for preserving dogma lies with the whole people of the Church, as the Patriarchs showed in their 1848 epistle. Of course, it is theoretically possible that all the people could abandon the truth, but I suppose when that happens the world will end.

Anyway, even though pre-Vatican II Catholicism was much more (though not completely by any means) faithful to ancient Christian dogma, the seeds for the current disaster were already there.

I think you summed the problem up perfectly! In Roman Catholicism, obedience to the Magisterium seems to be paramount. So, what happens when that Magisterium tells you to do or believe things that run counter to what the Church had always done or believed?

Whereas in Orthodoxy, the people as a whole are responsible for keeping these things in check, so that if a Metropolitan or Bishop becomes heretical, the people are dutybound to break communion and follow the ancient canons of the Church instead.

It was actually this very realization that caused me to understand that the Orthodox Church is the true Church. And so, ironically, it was my lifelong dilemma over the changes of V2 that led me to finally understand that the seeds of the destruction coming after V2 were laid well in advance, *by the very way the RCC looks at obedience to the Magisterium*. If I had never become a Traditional RC I probably never would have been able to get to the point I am now, because if I'd been a novus ordo Catholic I probably never would have realized this. I probably would have just blindly obeyed, not having any knowledge of what the church was like before to compare it with.

« Last Edit: July 22, 2011, 02:23:44 PM by Xenia1918 »

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"O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us..." (from the Prayer of St Basil the Great)

I am not saying that everything is wrong in Romano Catholcism like for example doing mission and having 1 billion people +. May God make all Churches One Church, true both in seen world and in unseen world.Amin.